Last ever post

As my last day at Numakunai comes to a close I am writing the last entry on this blog. As one era of my life ends, it seems only fit that my blog does too. Plus, as of tomorrow I shall no longer be living in the "inaka", so I have to start a new one.

I shall be having an internet free life for the majority of August, but come September I shall be ready and armed with my holiday snaps to go up on my new blog, so please continue to wait with bated breath.

But for now...dolce far niente!

Thank you all for reading.

Matsuri!!

A few days ago it was our town`s summer(?) festival. In fact I am not sure what festival it was, but they decorated one of the shrines and had lots of stalls and pretty lights and most importantly festival food. When there is fried chicken and crepes involved, a reason just isn`t necessary. I went on the last day just after school and of course it was just swarming with students. Lots of them came running up offering bites of whatever they had just bought. It was all kind of adding to my general celebrity feeling. Think it is best I am leaving very soon or I may develop one hell of an ego.

Stupidly, I forgot to take my camera to the actual thing, but here is a picture of JTB in his festival getup (which he then chickened out of wearing). Next week is the Sansa festival in Morioka and he has promised he will wear it to that on the condition I wear a yukata. We shall see.

My last lesson with 2-3

2-3 have definitely been my favourite class this year. They are always up for doing anything and work so hard and yet manage to be entertaining. Some classrooms have a horrible atmosphere when you go in, but this class were always so lively. There are lots of things I won`t miss about teaching, but I will certainly miss teaching this lot.

A picture of me

Good bye letters

On the letters the students wrote in class, they were supposed to draw a picture of themselves. Here are a selection. I think some of them have severe image problems.

The end is nigh

Today was the last day of term for the students. I still have two more days of sitting in the office trying to entertain myself for 8 hours a day when I have no lessons to plan and only the prospect of 30 minutes of desk-clearing to look forward to. I think they just do it so we don`t feel so sad about leaving, but just remember the boredom of having to come to school when we have nothing to do.

So of course we had to have the standard closing ceremony where we listen to the headmaster`s words of wisdom and extol the hockey team as if they hold the secret to eternal life. However, this ceremony had one distinct difference...I had to make a speech. Now I get up everyday and stand in front of theses kids and speak, and yet put my a couple of feet above them on a stage and suddenly it is rather scary. My hands were shaking and palms sweating and I was just generally praying that I wasn`t going to trip going up the stairs in my very cute Roppongi Hills kitten heels.

Anyway, the speech was good enough to evoke a few sniffles, although they may have been provoked by my slaughter of the Japanese language, but I would like to think they were brought on by the thought of me leaving. Then I got some flowers and managed to also descend the stairs without falling over, had a slight moment of confusion where I tried to sneak down the side, but then got escorted down the centre of rows of clapping students, then it was off to the headmaster`s study for tea, but sadly no biscuits.

I was also presented with lots of letters and drawings and little things made from thread. It was all very moving. At some point I shall put up a selection of the letters that made me laugh and one particularly good flattering drawing of me.

Legal blunder

Sorry it is a bit of a bad photo, but even in the blur I`m sure you can spot the mistake. Shame a certain dairy couldn`t.

many angles of a new house

The kitchen


The living room

It flushes!!!!

The crabs

Looks a bit like a spider, but he has a poorly eye and a missing antennae, so we have to love him anyway.

He really is quite cute!!

Lone wolf

Fuji TV has a great program called Fountain of Trivia in which they do really stupid experiments and make trivia from them. Last night I watched one where they went to Canada and a rather fearsome man in a lumberjack jacket took them up into the mountains to find wolves. When they found one, they recorded his howl and used a bowlingual translator to find out what he said. And the result...when a lone wolf howls at the moonlight, he is saying "what should I do?".

Kitler

I don`t know why someone hasn`t made this site before.